Temple Mountain

I was on my first trip to the San Rafael Swell in central Utah to camp and hike. I was really excited to explore the canyons and hike Little Horseshoe Canyon trail, but on the drive there we came upon a craggy butte with really nice cliff lines. The butte was surrounded by abandoned mines, but there was only one warning sign alerting visitors not to enter the mines. Being a nuclear engineer, and knowing there are abandoned uranium mines all over Utah, I was curious about the type of mining that occurred here. A quick google search revealed the butte is called Temple Mountain was the site of a massive uranium mining operation that left it completely ravaged. I was surprised that I didn’t already know about this, but I was even more surprised that none of the signs mentioned anything about potential radiation hazards.

This made me wonder about the unseen connections between the nuclear world and the natural world. How many of our favorite trails and climbing crags are in close proximity to nuclear sites - nuclear weapons sites, power plants, and labs - and do people really know about them?